Sunday, 3 May 2015

Unboxing WD Elements USB 3.0 1 TB

I wanted to buy another external hard disk to store my data and photos. I have 3 internal hard disks that I run my operating system and another 1 TB WD old external disk. This WD disk has been partitioned into two formats, one with Mac and the other is NTFS Windows Format.

The old WD disk is a 3.5"' external hard disk which requires a power supply. It is big and bulky. I would like something that does not require an external power supply and is USB 3.0. So, I have decided on the WD Elements USB3.0 1 TB 2.5" external hard disk. I went to hardwarezone to compare the prices of the WD Elements disk from different shops and Cybermind seems to be the lowest at $79 including GST.

I went to buy it on Thursday and the shop attendant said that I should run it for 30 days without registering the warranty online. If the disk has issues within the 30 days, Cybermind will replace it one-for-one. After 30 days, you can register online.

The WD Elements portable storage comes in a box. Unboxing is easy and the disk is protected in another packaging in the box. After unboxing, you can find the documentation for warranty, the USB3.0 cable and the disk. Nothing fancy in there.

It is very light and I plugged the USB3.0 into my Mac USB3.0 port. It connected immediately. I cannot copy the OSX files over as the disk is in NTFS format. There are some files in the disk. There is a WD Smartware Pro Free Trial. I copied all the files to my Mac and then format the disk to Mac OS Extended (journaled) using the Mac Disk Utility application. Later I learned that you can buy the Paragon NTFS for Mac 12 software to remove the barriers between HFS and NTFS. Once installed, you can create, delete and modify any files and folders on a NTFS formatted drive. Well, too late, I have formatted my disk to Mac OS.

I copied a 143 GB folder from my Mac to the WD Elements disk and it took 24 minutes using the USB3.0 connection. I'm not sure whether this is fast or slow. But I think it is satisfactory. There is no sound from the disk.